The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow
by Bamboofoxfire Productions
Summary: [Based off Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" feral!Hiccup series] Hiccup and Toothless have dealt with many humans in freeing dragons from cruel traps, but they have never met a human quite like this one before.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** So I promised myself no more Nightfall crossovers and to finish the three I already started but of course it isn't actually panning out that way lmfao.

Some people already know that I roleplay - a lot. And in making a HTTYD!Verse of one of my OCs for that purpose, I thought... "I HAVE to do something related to Nightfall with this guy", primarily just because of his circumstances and exactly how _different_ he would be from anyone else Hiccup and Toothless have been alleged to have encountered at any point in either Nightfall or Stormfall.

I'm not going to spoil exactly what I'm talking about just yet (albeit there's a lot of things that make this interaction interesting, there's one very SPECIFIC thing not immediately spelled out that makes it a little more of a unique dilemma), but it should become clear what it is by part 5/6 at the latest (this was going to be a one-shot at first but I decided on breaking it into three parts and then I got a little carried away with writing and its probably actually going to be somewhere at least around 10 parts instead because I literally can't be trusted to write anything short whoops).

Happy reading!

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 **The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow  
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic  
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics  
**

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Faulklin Kråke-tunge was a person who few liked and who liked none in return, and that was exactly as he wanted it.

Too long he'd been compliant to the whims of others, and too many times that had gotten him hurt and nearly killed. There had never been a sense of trust - no, that had always, _always_ , been off the table - but he had kept his head down, done as he was told and made no complaints for being punished for mistakes, or simply because someone was in a bad mood and he had happened to be in their way, a small and easy target.

One day he'd simply stopped being tolerant, every shred of restraint and passivity breaking in him like a worn and neglected bowstring drawn too tight.

He should have died that day, but he hadn't. He should have found a way to take hold of his own fate since surviving, but that had not come to pass either. In either case, he was determined to let nothing stop him. He was already damned; had already lost everything he had to give; a draugr cursed with undeath and bound by wicked sin to treacherous serpents who viewed themselves like gods.

He had not won his own fate back (yet), but so long as someone else held the key to his chains, he would snarl and bite and ravage with all the ferocity of Fenrisúlfr the monster wolf himself.

Ironic - he always muses - that he should be superstitiously attributed to both Fenrisúlfr and Odin at the same time, since legends speak so often that Fenrir will one day slay the god king.

Yet it is still not unbefitting to attribute both to him, in their own ways.

As a blacksmith who had lost one of his eyes, people already whisper their suspicions, but for him to also converse in the tongue of crows is what sells the belief the most. Two ravens who have bonded more personally with him he's even named Huginn and Muninn, if nothing else simply to revel in the psychological power it holds over most people. He may as well be casting them under a spell, and he enjoys every moment of uneasiness this brings about. Its a long-deserved rush that he never knew the taste of as a child, but its the last light that sustains him now, seeing cruel men shake in their skin and dodge someone less than half their size, intimidated by just one well-placed look.

He's learned, albeit hard-won, just how serious of a weapon a mere glare or glance can be, equally sharp as any blade or arrow, though it helps to be proficient in both of those skills as well.

Still, while these things make his life a little more tolerable now, they still don't make up for the fact that he is, without doubt, a thrall, answering to others who own his very life, and it means that they both have the societal right to do with him whatever they please and to force him into things he doesn't want. He is an asset - but not an individual. Not his own person.

This is simply his reality. Its the only thing he's known throughout all of his life. He's learned to play the game, to manipulate for better results that he wants, but he is still, inevitably, at the mercy (or more commonly the lack there-of) of others who regard him as less than human.

Out in open waters, Norse dragon hunters and trappers are common, as are ships from Wessex, Francia, and Asturia. He's had dealings with all of them and yet others still, some significantly more than others. He's been traded around more times than he cares to keep track of, and none he would call good experiences. This time he's among trappers, as he has been for about two years, he guesses - the second longest group he's ever been with.

It's especially frustrating, because he's done everything in his power to make his current "masters" tire of him and be rid of him, and most have and are ready to. But their leader is patiently stubborn and clever, and he hates to acknowledge that even privately.

Faulklin tends to hate everyone, but there are a few individuals who earn something even worse than hate, something that goes beyond what his vocabulary can describe. Loathing doesn't quite cut it. One of those people is dead (his handiwork, he's proud to say), but others yet continue to draw breath, no matter how much he's tried to remedy that.

Viggo Grimborn just so happens to be at the top of the list.

He never thought he'd find someone who so phenomenally manages to trump how much he despises the person who took the sight of one eye from him, but somehow he's found that one person, and its not even due to finding someone excessively more cruel than that. Viggo is not someone who acts unreasonably, and its exactly _that_ which he hates so much.

Viggo is a brilliant strategist, and that makes him Faulklin's own impossible foe.

Faulklin had always been clever. He outsmarted all others around him on a near-daily basis, saw possibilities where others saw nothing, and used resources no one else knew how he managed to use to his favor. He could speak to crows and ravens, and he could understand them. He could make them do what he wanted. He could beat opponents much larger than himself through alternative, underhanded means.

But Viggo falls for none of this. Viggo can predict him so well the man may as well be reading his very mind, hearing his thoughts, and that frustrates him to no end.

He laments how much he _knows_ he's outmatched by Viggo, how much every single strategy he comes up with inevitably fails, and how much he can't scare the man into wanting to be rid of him like everyone else. It revolts him how much potential Viggo sees in his ability to outwit others, and that no matter how many underlings he manages to kill or maim or wound, how many things he damages, or how much effort has to go towards keeping him on a leash, Viggo sees him as valuable enough to overlook all that and keep him around. He reviles being stuck with the one guy in the world who can so coldly calculate exactly when all other pieces _really can_ be sacrificed except the one that gets him results, and that piece just so happens to be him.

Viggo isn't wrong in assuming those results, either. He truly values the way Faulklin can think through problems and he knows how to force him to perform, unlike most others. He's the kind of persuasive man that even Faulklin's stubbornness - albeit begrudgingly - eventually submits to, and it takes no cages or whips or chains for the man to accomplish.

Still, while Viggo may not stoop to the level of mindless brutality, there is never any question as to whether or not Faulklin is considered a free man. He most definitely is not, and there's no intention of making him one. Freedom is something he has to take with his own hand, and one day he will, or die trying.

Its with begrudging but temporary acceptance of these circumstances that he's out here now, trudging through snow that easily reaches up to his knees in most places and up to his hips or even chest in others. The fact that he's in the lead of the band that's been assigned to guard against escape as they check traps, rather than following in the footsteps of the larger, burlier men, is no accident. Its rather difficult to run when you're exhausted by clearing the snowed path for everyone else to follow, especially when you're barely pushing five feet in height.

He chatters his annoyance in a language that is solely his, a tongue that he shares only with his black-feathered companions sitting on his shoulders, as he wades arduously though heaps of frigid white powder. Everyone has long since given up trying to make him cease his bird-chatter out of fear that he's plotting something new and wicked against them, as he's learned to do just that when challenged or punished for it, following the logic that if he's going to suffer for doing something he hasn't, he may as well just do it anyway to make the punishment one that was earned.

No human understands him, but the crows and ravens do, and they listen and reciprocate. He hates people, but birds and dragons and other animals, he can at least stand, and most he likes, even the ones that want to kill him because that's just what their species does to humans.

Mostly now he's only ranting, croaking harsh sounds that roughly translate to _Stupid, stupid, clumsy Hunters. Kill-hate-hate-hate-hate-hate. Stupid. Worthless. Long-rot uneatable won't-touch-it worthless. Hate-hate-hate-hate-kill-hate._ Its a saying among the corvids and other wildlife themselves that being so soured even a crow considers it inedible is one of the highest insults, as they eat virtually everything and love it all the better if its rotten. Suffice to say, it is used only for the worst of enemies. For Faulklin, that just so happens to be everyone who is human.

As they make their way through the snow that blankets nearly everything, they check traps. Many are empty. That's to be expected - dragons and deep winter don't get along very well, even self-heating dragons stay inside during a blizzard if they can help it, and most settlements stop raiding altogether until spring. It makes him wonder why exactly they're out here and who decided it was a good idea, then figures that the trickster god Loki must be impersonating someone of authority or passing along orders that don't exist to go trekking out into the wilds in the dead of winter.

He'd like to think that his luck could run in the direction of everyone freezing to death, but knowing his life instead he'll just get frostbite and end up a cripple when they have to take a dead limb off with an axe, and then he won't be running off anywhere quickly to get away. Or maybe that's Viggo's thinking. Perhaps Viggo even gets all his ideas from sharing a keg of mead with Loki himself when no one is looking and his ideas are not his own at all, and maybe that's why Viggo needs him alive and under his thumb.

He scoffs at that idea, knowing its completely ridiculous but choosing to get some amusement out of it anyway. Anything he can think of to dethrone Viggo of any respectability, acknowledged or otherwise, is a godsend in his book.

As they're checking traps though, he notices some of them are empty of dragons, but not untouched. A number of them are deliberately sabotaged, which gives him a few moments of pause. They aren't sabotaged in any way that any dragon he knows of can accomplish. When it comes to trapping dragons, there are trappers who know what they're doing and ones that don't - Viggo's Hunters, while tending to range anywhere from brain-dead to dim (not counting Viggo himself), one thing they do know well is their traps, and they know them well. The damn things are escape-proof for pretty much all known species, and the Grimborn's are some of the only true experts on every last species.

No, these traps were sabotaged by human hands. He knows this with only a glance because normally _he_ is the one sabotaging traps.

Sometimes its sabotaging the traps of competing tribes. Other times its against the Hunters themselves, when he can get away with it. He doesn't know of anyone else who would sabotage traps, except maybe other trappers looking to send a message, but even that is rare. He's done it though, so it wouldn't be a huge leap of imagination to guess that someone else may have also developed the tactic. Maybe even one of the tribes they'd done it to themselves before, trying to take revenge.

He doesn't draw attention to it though, hoping no one will notice. He has a history all his own with doing this, and he'll be the first one suspected and blamed. The dull, pulsing ache in his back is reminder enough of the last time he took blame for something, and he is certainly not eager for a repeat.

One of the traps they come across _does_ have a dragon in it, cold and tired with snow scattered and disrupted everywhere to show its struggles from before they arrived. It takes a good number of men still to restrain the beast and to start bringing it back with them towards camp, and Faulklin uses the time they're dealing with the dragon to slip away and continue on to the next ones.

Making a break for it is always on the forefront of his mind, but he knows how to bide his time and learned the hard way what happens when he loses patience. He won't run when the odds aren't in his favor, but he'll continually watch for an opening and assess his options. For now, he'll play good boy, but only because he's waiting for that opportune chance.

He finds more traps further out, empty or otherwise sabotaged, but with a surprising lack of anything like footsteps of a person that could have come through, or even sometimes a lack of dragon prints, as if done by a phantom... or someone very clever and badly wanting to flaunt it.

Finally he locates a trap with a catch in it - a Gronkle. Its nowhere near as tired as the last beast, and this time he's alone. He checks over his shoulder just in case, and there's no one else following him. He knows his options already. He could call for help in rangling it, wait for the rest to catch up to him (despite the very obvious snow-trail, it might take them a while, as they aren't the cleverest bunch and are more likely to retrace their own snow-trail than to correctly identify his), or he can set the thing free while no one is there to see it and accuse him of doing so.

Being that he always favors anything non-human over humans, the choice to him is obvious.

 _Watch. Hunters See-Approach-Warning_ he croaks to the birds perched on his shoulders, who both take to the air and perch in the trees, keeping an eye out for any of Viggo's approaching men while he approaches the trapped Gronkle. Expectedly, the dragon snarls at him, struggling against the trap that has it trapped while it warns him to stay away.

Faulklin is unafraid, and about to offer reassurances, but he stops, not because of the dragon in the trap, but because of a second one that wasn't there before, and now it is, prowling onto the top of a small cliff and wriggling in warning of an incoming pounce. Its big, sleek, and black as night, which make its glaring green eyes appear to glow menacingly in contrast.

There's only a split-second before it leaps, and only honed, instinctual reflex allows him to move out of its way, though the deep snow drastically impedes how much distance he's able to put between him and it before whirling around with a short, single-sided sword already drawn.

He goes over a list of species in his head, and settled on _Night Fury_. A rare breed, which would explain why he hasn't ever seen one this close before, but from what is known about them, it makes the most sense. Its not the Fury that manages to catch his eye the most, though. Its the thing - the _person_ \- on the Fury's back. His eye doesn't miss it for even a blink.

There is a human, a man maybe a couple years older than himself, riding atop the dragon's shoulders, dressed in black... scales? ...and snarling as if he were a beast himself with all the wildness in his eyes of a frenzied animal. He is easily and quickly enough distinguishable as a human to Faulklin's single eye, but it comes as a surprise, albeit somewhat of a milder one since he saw the broken traps. Now it makes sense why - or at least partially so.

There are certainly some questions that go through his mind, an itch of natural curiosity that he suspects anyone would have being faced with such an adversary as this, but he doesn't devote a great deal of time to thinking about it. Whoever he is, he is still only human, and Faulklin swore he would be fearful of no man ever again. He spent all of his childhood being afraid. He was not going to let anyone put fear into him again so long as he could help it.

"Do you want something?" he snarked, tilting his head cockily with a light of challenge in his eye. His steps were circling, slow but deliberate, and the Fury mirrored him with a low growl. It was an unnerving sound, and certainly, he might let himself fear the dragon itself just a bit, but its rider - whose green eyes, green just like the dragon's, he met unwaveringly - he would not be intimidated by. Not now. Not ever.

There was a similar motion, the rider haughtily lifting his head so that his throat showed clear as day, his own hues alight with a mutual hatred. The man uttered a sound, something that was barely discernible, heavily broken Norse, but still at least trying to speak intelligibly,

" _Pfikingr_ kkko!" There was a motion, like violently smacking away an annoying insect that buzzed near someone too many times and refused to leave. "Drakkkn here. _Pfikingr_ nuh!"

It took a bit of concentration and thinking to decipher the words, but he's learned to decipher more difficult, nigh indiscernible sounds from other species, primarily his feathered friends, so it isn't impossible.

If this were an actual dragon that had learned to speak broken Norse, he may have abided without a second thought - but this _command_ comes from a human, and people always and without fail manage to bring out an unhealthily rebellious spark in him that wants to do the exact opposite of what he's told.

Part of him thinks that maybe he's picking enemies with the wrong person - because that person is backed up by a shrieking Night Fury, but more because it seems to want to take its rider's side in this confrontation rather than because its a loose dragon that could easily kill him - but just because he has a dragon following his command doesn't mean he is any sort of decent person, just as Viggo not leaving physical scars on him like most do doesn't make the Hunter's leader a morally sound human being.

Humans, as is his experience, are solely self-serving and only use others as a means to an end. He sees no reason why this dragon-rider should be any different from anyone else in that regard.

Idly twirling his blade in one hand, taunting, he lifts his own head in a similar fashion, mimicking and not backing down, and motioning slightly with his free hand.

"Come and make me."

Not unexpectedly, they choose to fire a blast at him rather than charge in towards his blade, and he leaps out of the way of it and into the snow. He's quick to get back to his feet and dashes for cover, since it would be decidedly bad for him to get maimed by a direct hit from one of those. Maybe it would instantly kill him, which wouldn't be such a terrible thing, but he can only imagine the pain of surviving something like that. Night Fury's are legendary for their blast-power, and he's not taking his chances.

Another incoming blast forces him to throw himself to the ground, simultaneously rolling. He can feel the heat of the blast that misses by mere inches, flying off somewhere into the woods and hitting the branches of a tree instead. Scrambling into hiding behind a boulder, he gropes for something he can use to his advantage and finds a sizeable stone caked in ice, which is better than ending up empty-handed.

He hears snow crunching, wings flapping, and an angry yowl. Clearly, its coming for him, but now is his best chance. He pops up out of hiding and hurls the stone in hand, nailing the mid-flight dragon straight between the eyes. Its not much, but it catches the beast by surprise and offsets its course back to earth amongst the snow and head-first into stone, enough to stun it.

The rage that ignites in its riders eyes, all of it directed at him, is genuine, and the man leaps off the dragon's back, arching and roaring. The man isn't dumb enough to leap straight at him when he's still armed with his sword, instead pacing on all-fours and eyeing for some kind of opening. For all intents and purposes, he almost does look like a dragon himself, if not for the very-human face twisted into an ugly snarl.

Normally the man's position on the high ground would be to his advantage, but Faulklin can see the calculation in his eyes and the awareness that leaping now could see him jumping straight on top of a deadly blade and skewering himself. There's no way to tell exactly how far his intellect reaches, but clearly he at least isn't _that_ stupid.

At this point, its a standoff, and Faulklin considers that maybe the man is waiting for his dragon to recover its senses and merely distracting him. In any case, he isn't interested in fighting or killing the Fury, but he will _gladly_ put an end to the one using it as an alternative beast-of-burden.

Finally the man leaps down, somewhat away from him so as not to be immediately lunged upon, then turns and springs straight for him. Its a little too quick for him to use his blade effectively, and before he knows it they're both tumbling through the snow, blinded by a flurry of white on all sides. He feels claws - claws that shouldn't be - rake his stomach. Mostly it catches thick winter clothes, but some of it hits and lacerates flesh.

The slashes don't go entirely unreturned. One of the man's hands - gloved, he now realizes, which also explains the claws, sewn into the leather - is tightly twisting his wrist, but he manages a shallow slash with the tip to the dragon-man's shoulder that has him instantly recoil and leap away to gain distance before the blade can cut too deeply.

Faulklin likewise scrambles to his feet, but he doesn't wait to attack, immediately lunging with his sword. The very tip grazes from one cheek to the bridge of the dragon man's nose as he dodges back, flecking the snow with blood, but there's nothing beyond superficial damage done. Its then that the dragon man stands up fully. He's thinner than most other people Faulklin is used to, but he is - inevitably, as most people are - significantly taller, and fully knows it.

It irks him somewhat, but he is also used to it. The simple fact of the matter is that he's come to expect he is and will always be the smallest person of any group or in any fight. For some moments, the hunched posture had been enough to make him hope that he would be the taller one in this confrontation, but that was much too much to hope for. In size, he's outmatched by both the dragon and the crazy wild-man, and he knows more than anyone how big of a difference size can make in a serious struggle.

The thought flees quickly when he hears shouting and snow crunching under many pairs of feet. Seems Viggo's hunters have finally caught up with him, which turns the tides drastically. Angrily spitting, the rider retreats a little, then turns fully for his dragon, which has begun to properly recover at this point. The movement climbing onto its back once more is practiced and fluid, effortless even, and the Fury is more enraged than ever.

Faulklin licks his lips apprehensively, dropping his posture only slightly in second-guessing, but he isn't backing down out of being afraid so much as being strategic. The approaching Hunters have yet to fully realize what's going on or what they're now up against, and if he manages to retreat at just the right moment, he can escape both problems at once - the Hunters as well as the furious black dragon.

The dragon is focused on him for now, but he can see that attention waning little by little as the men come charging in, drawing its eyes away. There's no way it can single him out at this point without sacrificing its own safety, and he knows it. Its only a matter of holding his ground until that one split second. He doesn't break eye contact with either dragon or rider the entire time, watching and waiting, looking for that opportune cue to make a retreat at the best moment, when all Hel would break loose between Hunters and Fury.

He saw it, a quick snap of its head and snarling teeth, men all just barely passing the line of trees before the small clearing, and then he was gone, plowing through the snow in as much of a sprint as was humanly possibly. He heard the shrieks and shouts behind him, the sounds of dragon-fire and ringing metal - none of that was his concern any longer. Let dragon and Viking kill each other for all he cared. By the time either of them turned their attention on him, _if_ any of them survived at all, he'd be long gone and well on his way to somewhere where he answered to no one but himself.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow  
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic  
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics  
**

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Winter is a time for the harshest of biting cold and the gathering of all the Nest and the curling of many dragons together so that their heart-fires keep dragons warm and together and alive. Winter is a time that will freeze wings in flight and make them tear and cripple so they can never fly again. It is a time for dragons to stay inside and for the King to bring the flock food from underneath deep waters as the good King that he is so that all are able to eat without risking the worst weather of the year that even the bravest dare not challenge because it is a fight that cannot be won and is rarely if ever worth it to even try to beat.

It makes it unusual, then, that any dragon might venture out, but this winter has been milder than most and there has been a newcomer to the Nest who has escaped the bite of traps but knows other dragons that have not.

It is a stranger that they think might have been told away from their territory once before, but a stranger with no flock like theirs. Some dragons are solitary, but all dragons are best with a flock and a Nest, and the flock that Hiccup and Toothless belong to is large and their Alpha great. The fact that this dragon is coming to them for help in the deep winter says that it has no large flock of its own to turn to for help or shelter.

It is not entirely unwelcome, and Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss - the two dragons who are Hiccup and Toothless together - always are willing to help dragons from the traps that humans lay for them, though in a time of winter they will have to be more careful than ever. Though humans too, from what they know, prefer to stay in their own nests during this time, it is the weather itself that is the greatest hunter of all, and must be respected for its power and deadliness.

There is much talking of caution and planning back and forth. Only in the breaks of cold weather should they fly, and only when they are sure that the breaks in weather will last until they can land somewhere where they might take shelter. This is an absolute that no clever dragon would argue against, and Hiccup and Toothless pride themselves on being the cleverest of dragons.

The stranger takes them where the need to go, traversing from one small island to another, until they come upon one that is larger and sure to have small flocks of dragons.

Humans, as far as they know, do not like winter any better than dragons do, so to find trappers out in this time of year is strange, and if there is a Nest in this island, _pfikingr_ \- Vikings - would be hard-pressed to find it or know that one is here. Even if the snows have been less and the storms not as fierce this time around, there is still much snow and ice, swallowing whole most other things and burying them so that all that can be seen is white. Trees bow and creak under the weight of it, and streams halt their progress, made solid into ice that traps even fish mid-swimming.

There can be no mistake, though - _pfikingr_ have most certainly been through. There are tracks in places in the snow that have been left by humans, and off the shore, the two-who-are-one easily identify a ship with leafless trees rising from the ship-ground that rests close to shore, drifting on the shallow water but not quite so near as to be beached and left dead.

He wonders if the ship and _pfikingr_ may have been caught too far from their Nests to make it back, or if perhaps they are _pfikingr_ without Nests and flocks to return to, just as some dragons are lone wanderers, as they know this is not an island where humans make their home. In any case, it doesn't matter. Humans are trappers of dragons, and Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss are breakers of traps that harm dragons. This is a true thing. It is a thing they know intimately.

Once they have flown the island from far above and surveyed the shore where they can see the ship and _pfikingr_ milling around it, they begin their hunt for the traps and for the dragons which have been bitten by them. Several are easy enough, as the stranger takes them straight to its friends to be freed. There is first a she who is a loud-voice cousin and another he who is like the blue-spikes cousin Flies-in-Storms but who is more green than he is blue.

Other traps they find empty, and as they are empty and not-sprung they know that the traps are ready to bite and tangle and snare, and so they must be more careful than if they approached a trap that had already grabbed hold of another dragon, and if there are traps under the snow then they must be twice as sneaky and careful about where they put their paws.

Still, the two of them together are the best of dragons, and they have broken and sprung many traps and seen all kinds of them, so they know what to look for when the trap is not so obvious or is well-hidden even so. Biting ground-traps are the hardest to find when they are covered up, but there are also tree-snare traps that they are able to find and break and there are baited traps where _pfikingr_ -beast kills have been left that they know better than to try to eat from because that is when the trap will bite them.

The baited-biting traps they know they cannot land near when they cannot see past the snow, but they also cannot leave them for other dragons to step into or try to eat from and be caught, so instead they land on a thick tree where they know humans do not leave traps and they ponder it for a time. There are some ideas that they think up, but many are not good ones.

First they must find where the fangs of the trap are without being caught by them, and they think back on an old trick of poking around for the teeth with a large stick. It is a lucky thing that _pfikingr_ always put food-bait in the throat of the traps, so they know where the middle is, but they must also know how big the jaws are before stepping down, or they may be caught even if they do not trust the prey-beast meat.

With the long stick, he moves the prey-beast from the throat of the trap he knows is there, and as he expects, the trap springs and snaps its jaws, breaking the stick between its teeth in two, but otherwise its jaws are closed with no dragons inside them, which is how it should be. Still, they are careful, and do not trust that there might not be another trap, as some _pfikingr_ put many in one place, so Hiccup hangs down from Toothless's shoulders - and Toothless in turn keeps them anchored from touching the ground with a tail that is tightly coiled around a branch - while he works to break the mechanism on the hinge so that the biting trap cannot simply be opened and set to bite again.

There are many other traps after this that get similar treatment, but all are generally easy for him to break, if not requiring a bit of time and patience to do so.

It is just after they have recently broken one of many traps that they hear the loud sounds of _pfikingr_ clumsily trying to walk their way through the snow, perking and trying to pinpoint where it is coming from. Once they have figured out a direction, the dragon-pair turn and fly the opposite way. They are not unable to fight _pfikingr_ , but if it can be avoided, they will flee when they can and remain hidden, and there may be more traps for them to break ahead of the _pfikingr,_ and break more empty traps they do until finding another that has a dragon within it, this one a rock-skin cousin.

At first the dragon is wary of them and snarls in defense of itself, unsure of the motives of the two newcomers, but Hiccup and Toothless are sure to make themselves look non-threatening as they approach and greet the dragon companionably with _hello hello friendly us good dragons yes friendly helping no-threat us good us free you friendly calm._

There is a little bit of uncertainty, but the rock-skin cousin relaxes a little bit, suspicious but at least not openly hostile now. Seeing this, Hiccup slides easily from Toothless's back and approaches with a tentativeness, chirping reassurances as he gets near the trap.

It is a metal snare that that has caught the rock-skin cousin's leg with a locking piece on the end that keeps the snare from loosening even if the dragon were to stop moving away, with the other end going up into the trees. It is one of the more elaborate snare traps he has come across, but not entirely new to him.

He chatters a _still be still you calm relaxed helping break trap free you calm easy us good we help_ and sets to work on trying to break the small mechanism free so that the rock-skin cousin will be able to pull its leg loose and be on its way. While he works, Toothless keeps watch and listens for _pfikingr_ that may be approaching, as when Hiccup gets deeply focused on a task like drawing on paper or working to break traps he sometimes forgets his surroundings until something has snuck up on him.

The trap itself is stubborn and to make its stubbornness worse, there is snow through the crevices that has crusted into ice that must be chipped away, but hopefully the freezing will have made the mechanism more brittle as many things become in winter.

It is while Hiccup is still working that Toothless perks, rotating his head and ear-flaps and warbling a soft _coming pfikingr maybe threat hide-watch-pounce maybe coming quick us hide clever ambush_ in his throat so that only Hiccup and the rock-skin cousin near him hears it. They will not leave the dragon to be preyed upon by _pfikingr_ , but they will be at a disadvantage if they are the ones surprise-pounced and not the other way around. The best attack is the one enemies are not aware of until it is happening, a strategy they have learned many times from hunting and from trying-and-seeing.

Hiccup wordlessly agrees and swings back onto Toothless's shoulders, the black dragon leaping up onto an overhang of large rocks and onto the other side to wait and watch and probably to pounce once they see who their enemies are and how many. They are careful to lie flat and Toothless folds his wings in close so they don't stick up and stills his tail from twitching so that it does not brush against anything to make noise.

They see the movement peering out from the snow and rocks of a _pfikingr_ clumsily stomping through the trees towards the trapped dragon, and to their best of luck, it is completely alone and smaller than most _pfikingr_ they are used to.

It causes a moment of wondering if the he- _pfikingr_ is young, not quite a hatchling but maybe a fledgling that has not yet grown into its adulthood, but it has a foul-angry look to its face and a large scar that suggests maybe it has more years than it looks to them. Hiccup after all is one of the smallest of the nest, averaging only the size of most hatchlings although he is already grown, and though he does not consider himself human, he is so in body and still smaller than many humans are, so he does not think of it as strange that an adult human may be small as well. Stranger than that are the ravens that sit on his shoulders when he first appears.

They watch as the _pfikingr_ stops, watching the rock-skin cousin and thinking, shifting his weight slightly as he sizes up the rock-skin cousin and glances for other following _pfikingr_. He seems to come to a decision and begins walking forward, the two ravens leaving his shoulders to disappear into the trees, and the two-who-are-one watch the steps and judge the distance before he will be within pouncing range before they make themselves seen.

As soon as they rise from hiding, they see the he _pfikingr_ go still in his steps, the look one of genuine surprise, though not of total shock. Toothless grips the stone and wriggles for the best purchase for only a second before springing to leap upon the small _pfikingr_. It is a surprise that the scar-faced human manages to leap out of the way of their pounce in the deep snow, but it is also of little consequence.

They are two together and Toothless is big and together they are bigger, and the _pfikingr_ is small and alone. If he is smart - they think together - then he will turn and flee.

But he doesn't.

The One-Eye bares a long, metal sharp-claw at them and stands his ground, calculation flitting through the single blue hue. They can see him watching Toothless in a way that is familiar - many _pfikingr_ when faced with Toothless look at him with a sense of focus that is hard to miss, sometimes with awe and others with covetousness and more still with fear. In this encounter, there is little of that, if any at all, only a sense of cold thinking, weighing the worth and the risk with a sort of indifference.

The One-Eye's gaze does not linger on Toothless for more than a few seconds before shifting to Hiccup, but the look there is different. There is a moment of confusion, the slightest tilt of his head in seeing something new for the first time, before it twists into something like loathing and disgust.

Underlying all of these reactions is something that neither of them like, but they cannot pin down exactly what the thing in the One-Eye's face or his posture that unnerves them so. Trappers are nothing new, and they do not fear humans when they have a clear advantage, so it is all the more troubling to prickle at some foreign thing about this human that they have not faced before and cannot identify.

All the same, the enemy before them is only a _pfikingr_ , and they know how to fight those. They are not an unseen thing like nightmares in the mind. They can be blasted and bitten and clawed. They can be wounded and killed. The two of them together have little to be afraid of, and they will know to be cautious of the unknown thing that nips at their tails.

The _pfikingr_ tilts his head in challenge, eyes sharp and mutually unafraid, and there is a sharp bark that leaves his lips, speaking a question that is as much the clearest of taunts. The One-Eye will find that pulling their tails will not end well if he does not back away.

There are only snippets of the words that Hiccup understands, but it is enough to know the meaning, and he motions with a swipe of his claws to _go-away_.

" _Pfikingr_ kkko!" he snarls, Toothless lashing his tail to emphasize their command. They will give him this one chance to turn and leave before they attack, and one chance only before they make good on their threat. "Drakkkn herrr! _Pfikingr_ nuh!"

He could see the few moments of struggle to understand, and in the time he has had dealings with the people of an island he knows by the sounds of _Buh-rrrrKK_ , he has come to expect that it takes many moments for humans to understand when he tries to speak as they do - but its a compromise he must make, because _pfikingr_ cannot or understand properly as dragons do.

Verbally, he knows not to expect a reply that is as a dragon understands it, but the posture of the One-Eye speaks many things. Once he seems to understand the command, he hackles as much as a human visibly can, and the way he holds himself speaks _Defiance!_ and the way his eye flashes screams _Challenge!_

Hiccup meets his challenge by baring his throat to see if he will make good on it, waiting to see if the _pfikingr_ will pounce for it or if he will back down after all, but he is met instead with the same motion in return so that now the only thing to do is for someone to leap first, and a motion that he has come to recognize as _come here_ from the she _pfikingr_ whose name the closest sound he can make is Uh strrrTT gives him invitation to leap first.

But he is clever and he is two dragons together. He will not leap straight into the sharp-claw that the _pfikingr_ holds, and in silent understanding, Toothless whistles fire in the back of his throat to meet the challenge being made to them both.

The One-Eye leaps out of the way of their blast and races around the side of the clearing where the trap was first laid, the two of them standing between the rock-skin cousin and the running _pfikingr_ that is circling them. Another shot is better aimed, and it only barely misses because the small _pfikingr_ moves quickly to avoid it and scrambles behinds rocks for cover where they cannot blast.

With a strong thrust of wings, they lift themselves skyward to be above the _pfikingr_ who is in-hiding. They have seen no flying sharp-things or the branches that make them fly, so to be in the air should give them more of an advantage to the grounded One-Eye who has only the one sharp-claw that they can see.

It is only shortly after they have taken to the air and are readying to swoop that the One-Eye appears again and hurls a chunk of ice and rock that hits Toothless squarely between the eyes. It is more of a surprise than a hurt, but in the couple of moments that he is shaking his head and moving, he runs into the side of the rock that the One-Eye took to hiding behind, leaving him stunned.

They both understand stunned, and that it is a bad thing to be in a fight or among enemies. It gives them a chance to attack and to reach the vulnerable places that would normally be protected because it dulls the senses. So while one of them is stunned, the other must fight and defend until Toothless can recover.

He scrambles from Toothless's back and arches himself up atop the rock, having an advantage of height above the _pfikingr_ , but he is still aware of the brandished sharp-claw in the One-Eye's paws and instead holds his ground between his enemy and Toothless, snarling and displaying himself as a threat to be taken seriously, pacing one way and the other as he watches for an opening.

He sees the look in the enemy _pfikingr_ 's one eye and knows that without Toothless, the other sees him as less of a threat, as he is only half of one dragon who is two, but he is still a dragon himself and knows how to fight. He has been having to fight _pfikingr_ his whole life, many much bigger than this one, who is still smaller than himself. He will not be beaten easily, and Toothless should recover any moment now.

When he sees a good spot to leap down to, he does so and immediately turns his claws on the small human, bowling him over and raking claws into his unprotected belly. He is satisfied to see the grimace that creases the other's face in a snarl, but the clawing does not go entirely unreturned, and he feels the bite of the sharp-thing dig shallowly into his shoulder.

He immediately leaps back before the claw can bite deeply, keeping weight from the one leg and only balancing on the other tree as he distances himself and whirls around to face his adversary head-on. It is in this moment of distancing himself and making sure his back is not turned and exposed to attack that the smaller _pfikingr_ does just that, leaping for the opening he sees.

He is surprisingly fast, but the One-Eye is small and does not look strong so he probably _must_ make up for these things with being quick of fang and claw. Hiccup barely has the time to leap back, and the claw manages to slash just beneath his eye, far too close for his comfort, and flicks free when it meets the arch of his nose. The look on the One-Eye's face is one of satisfaction and triumph at his scratch, and only a scratch though it may be, it is more than many _pfikingr_ manage to land on him in the few times where he has fought one-to-one.

It is an impressive thing, but not one that he would commend, as it shows the nature of _pfikingr_ as enemies who hurt and kill dragons, and there is no respect to be had in that.

He stands up more fully on his hind legs, snarling _hatred_ and _fierce me fierce you enemy pfikingr fierce me you not give up go-away!_ and he can see, to his own satisfaction, a brief moment of hesitation at their difference in sizes even without Toothless, and that gives him some confidence, though not enough to lose sight of the danger and become reckless.

There are sounds of more _pfikingr_ now that there wasn't before and of approach, and he angrily snarls and turns to scrabble up the rock to where Toothless has recovered and pounced on top of. He can feel the tremble of rage that travels from wings-to-tail in Toothless at seeing the slash that came too close to his eye - that a _pfikingr_ would leave his Hiccup- _beloved-one_ wounded in two places and try to blind him!

But together, they need not worry about that. Together they are strong. Together they are the best. They will show this one-eyed _pfikingr_ that they are not easy to fell and that they will be the ones to triumph and see the trapped dragons freed!

They roar this together as _Challenge! Us strong together fierce fierce triumphant! You little pfikingr enemy can't-win go-away you enemy bad bad pfikingr go! Us fierce! Us victorious together-strong fierce!_

They can see the second-guessing, the slight retreat and hunch in the shoulders and head that is like _submission_ and _giving-up_ but there is still a look of intense thinking like he is considering surrendering and then pouncing when they have given mercy and an escape now that the One-Eye's flock is coming to help him. There is still a held-ground _challenge_ in the one eye that watches them without looking away or bowing out, though his legs shift in a way that says _going-to-run_ and they are not yet sure what to believe he will do.

It is when the other _pfikingr_ appear, fresh to the fight and angry, that the One-Eye turns and bolts away before either dragon-pair or other _pfikingr_ can fully figure out what is going on, and by then their attentions have turned to each other and the One-Eye is momentarily forgotten in favor of dealing with these new enemies.

Toothless charges fire in his throat with a keening whistle that makes many of the _pfikingr_ come up short and immediately search for places to hide and seek shelter from the incoming blast. They all scatter to the sides when he fires, and then start to regroup shortly afterwards. Unlike the other, these ones are armed with flying sharp-things, and they know to avoid the sting of them, diving behind the rock they had at first perched on.

Sprinting around the stone on the ground, they leap upon the first _pfikingr_ they see that isn't already armed with a sharp-claw that could seriously wound either of them, knocking the wind from the enemy, and then whirling on the rest. One Toothless whips his tail into and sends them careening against the rock, and another that tries to lunge at his flank gets flung back by a wing. One that charges with a sharp-claw in hand the dragon grabs by his forearm and throws him with a quick snap of his head, while Hiccup dives under the legs of another that is charging at the same time and knocks them off balance and onto their face, before snarling at another who has not yet decided what to do.

In only a short amount of time, they send the _pfikingr_ sprinting back from where they had first come, defeated, and yowl their victory after the retreating trappers before returning to finish undoing the trap on the leg of the rock-skin cousin. When it finally comes off, the dragon offers its gratitude and quickly takes to the sky and away, unwilling to linger any longer.

It is then that the One-Eye enters their thoughts again, wondering if he will be a problem they have not yet solved, as he ran a different way than where the Hunters have set up their ship nest. There may be more traps and more dragons caught by them, and it looked as though the One-Eye was fleeing under the distraction that the others caused rather than backing down out of fear of being outmatched. He may be going to get other caught dragons from under their noses right now, and they resolve to find him and be certain.

They fly and follow the tracks in the snow, not needing to look very hard to know where he has gone. Other times they would need to stop and scent and listen, but the winter and white that covers the ground makes tracking the easiest it could ever be, so long as they do not let themselves be caught and frozen by the weather.

It is only a short time of flying and following the trial that they soon see him, struggling to plow through the thickness on his own and making his way at a painfully slow pace compared to the two-who-are-one, who are impeded by nothing but sometimes strong winds when they fly, and they dive down and pounce on their target.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow  
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic  
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics  
**

* * *

There are many kinds of superstitions and omens that many others believe in, but Faulklin has never found it in him to fall for those kinds of fantasies. He'd always had too many real, tangible things in his life to worry about without fretting over things like trolls or spirits. Fate was the only superstition he'd ever cared pay attention to, and only because he wanted so terribly to change his own which was not his own for too long.

He wasn't going to delude himself into thinking the Night Fury and the one riding it were any sort of blessing or any sort of change in his luck and fate, but that didn't mean he couldn't use the moment to make a bid for freedom. He'd waited long enough for things to change on their own. As he often heard said, to see something done right, a person had to do it themselves.

He would have to be deaf, blind, and dumb not to see this chance for what it was and seize and shape it to his benefit as much as possible.

So as soon as he saw that split-second of distraction on the dragon and rider's faces, and heard the Hunters quickly approaching and not yet aware of the dangerous Night Fury before them ready to fight and kill, he bolted in whatever direction was open that would take him far away from all of this nonsense.

It was difficult to move quickly, both because of the depth of the snow piles and with his legs more or less numbed by the cold from them, but he stubbornly forced himself to keep moving. He had pushed his way through much worse things, and now would be no exception.

When they had set out before, the sky had been half-clear of clouds and nothing fell from the sky, but now there were the every-so-often flickers of snowflakes drifting from thickening clouds above, barely enough to even notice, but a warning to what might come later.

He knows in his mind that running is mostly always a futile effort. Most places are islands, and without a ship or even a dingy of his own, there aren't many places for him to go. But this is the far north, and its winter. Beneath the deadly cold, even the churning ocean eventually submits to the sting of it, freezing solid enough to leave many ships dead in the water, caught in ice. Some ships are built to break through, but many aren't, which leaves most tribes holing up without even the thought of raiding anyone else until spring.

But he's seen the sheets of ice hold even the weight of great ice bears and sleds and small armies. If he can find a long enough break in the weather and travel quickly, maybe this time he can make it somewhere that he can't be followed. Viggo may have ships that can break sheets only just thick enough to halt all-would knars in their path, but there are places where the ice becomes mountains, and no one wants to be exposed to the elements on foot with no shelter.

It's foolish to even try to brave that far a distance on his own, with nothing to even make a tent, but he fears continued servitude much more than he fears freezing to death under the wake of the weather.

Over the crunching and plowing of snow as he tries to force his way through it, he almost doesn't hear the sound of leather wings of a dragon in the cold air, but he sees its shadow stealing the reflection of light from the shards of snow just before he feels it crash against his shoulders and throw him to the ground. Already he had been seeing almost all white, but now he can count with his eyes the individual pieces so close to his eyes, and the dark shapes of trees and leafless brush has vanished.

One paw of the dragon - he notices - has his arm trapped against the frozen earth (the one that is holding his sword), while another grips into his back, which is far worse and flares with the pain of older wounds stressed open. He makes no point of moving or struggling, he can feel that the weight is one he wouldn't be able to throw off, and the snarl of the dragon promises pain and orders stillness. A human, he will never submit to, but he feels no shame for heeding an animal, much less one which has a clear advantage.

He stays still without struggle, the only signs of being awake that he exhibits being winded breathing and a slight shifting of shoulders to alleviate the ache in them, to no avail. The dragon perhaps takes his movements as disobedience or a threat of some kind - he isn't sure - and weights him down more firmly with a snarl that says _N_ _o! You still obey you stop you still surrender be still!_

He listens, but the weight doesn't leave, and barely lessens. He knows the voices and the motions of dragons - of most animals, really - and has no problems with hearing them as other humans do. He cannot always clearly speak back to them in voice, but he knows the motions.

Though he doesn't quite remember it, except in knowing it was never allowed to him, he never had the same intrusiveness and clumsy, rough exploring sort of nature as other children did when he was small.

Though he doesn't consciously realize it most of the time, what some consider a gift and most overlook as useless in his ability to see and hear the things that dragons and animals speak comes from the life he's had, always having to watch and anticipate the anger and unpredictability of masters who owned his life and bade he follow their will and never his own.

He sees and hears other creatures because he has never had the safety of family or a tribe that see him as more than property to allow him the ignorance of not understanding the subtler cues of others, because he has always been in the claws of predators that enjoy hurting and had to know when to flee and when to submit so that the strikes weren't more numerous or more cruel, because they were never completely avoidable. He has always been human, but also a scared animal, and neither are things he likes to admit to himself.

Ironically enough, despite all their boasting of intelligence and criticism of the lack of intelligence in animals, he finds that humans are the ones who make no sense. Animals are at least predictable and their rules and boundaries rarely if ever change. He has never been bitten or scratched at a time where he hasn't deserved it. He has rarely ever seen animals which continue to punish only to feel powerful when another of their own kind submits and whines, but he can't even count the number of times where he surrendered and apologized and pleaded for mercy and still his consciousness was sooner to slip than their hands were to stall another blow.

Under a human's boot, the panic would be so strong it would leave him drowning, shaking, and blind with a million different thoughts of how they could make him only wish for death. Under the claws of a dragon, he can think of only a couple of outcomes, and all, even the ones that would kill him, are merciful by comparison of what he expects of humans to do. If it kills him, at least it'll be quick.

So he doesn't tremble. He doesn't gasp with the onset of panic. He doesn't even cower away and whimper with the idea of how badly this could go. He goes limp, totally and unconditionally, and he waits without expectation.

The only thing he can think of is the surprise it usually brings about, that he doesn't scream or fight and try to kill in retaliation. He hears it in the dragon's voice, a mix of surprise saying _surrender you? you?_ and satisfied _good you caught surrender you listen understand good_.

There is another voice then, and this one he knows as the rider on the back of the Night Fury, which already begins to kindle a new spark of distaste towards this entire situation, but the Fury's claws are still on his back and there's nothing he can do about that right now.

" _Pfikingr_ kkko!" he snarls, same as before. There are other sounds, and these he thinks are the dragon's, but- ...no, they aren't. It's slight, almost indiscernible, but he can hear the difference as the rider is growling at him _go-away bad human you bad go dragons not-yours bad!_

It's puzzling, but more-so because he knows that it isn't the dragon making the sounds. He could just be growling mindlessly, but from what Faulklin knows himself, he isn't sure. It doesn't sound like the shoddy improvisations he hears on the lips of most people who _think_ of growling as meaningless or children who pretend to know because that's what children do.

But he knows he can understand, and to some extend he can speak it, so he supposes others learning isn't entirely impossible. Just very, very rare. In any case, he still knows that the order comes from the mouth of a human, and he has no respect for that.

"Piss off." He wonders if the Fury-rider understands that much. Perhaps not. He doesn't care. The tone carries all of the same meaning anyway.

The rider snarls _agitation_ and _anger_ , chattering something like _listen you!_ that he's not sure he's meant to understand or expected to and then speaking in a more human-like manner, " _Pfikingr_ kkko! Oooo-mn nuh herrr! Bad! Oooo-mn, bad, kkko!"

Faulklin scoffs. He understands the meaning of _you humans must go, you aren't allowed here, you're bad_ , but he never overlooks that the words are coming from another human. Even if he knows how to speak like a dragon, he is still human. It's just another learned language, just as he himself knows the Latin that tradesman use and a small few phrases in Gaelic and Frankish and British, but that doesn't make him any less Norseman.

"Take your own damn advice and fuck off to the far horizon, leave the dragons out of your own personal problems, _human_."

He can feel the claws on his back tighten. The dragon doesn't much like his words. The rider seems to like them even less, but the indignation and insult that colors the man's voice are like honey to his hears.

"Nuh! Nuh oooo-mn! Drakkkn! _(click)_ -uudt drakkkn! Drakkkn herrr! Oooo-mn bad! Oooo-mn kkko!" He doesn't even need to look and see to know that the rider is bristling, claiming himself a dragon. It's laughable, really. He himself would love nothing less than to claim himself some other species, but he isn't, and he never will be. His reality is a loathsome human one, and he hates himself for that just as strongly as he hates all of those around him, because he knows that that weakness and ugliness is something that's in him as well, no matter how much he tries not to be the same as others who have hurt him time and again. Even with all the effort in the world, he is still that same terrible creature as the rest. He can't escape that. Not so long as he lives, and when he dies, he'll be sent to a human's afterlife.

" _Human._ " He spits it defiantly like poison.

"Nuh!" he hears back, frustrated and bitter and filled with conviction.

Maybe it will only get him killed, but he sees it for a weak point and exploits it, in the way that humans see fault and pick at it and pick at it until it breaks. He knows from experience that when dealing with smarter adversaries, what you give up to your enemies in anger is everything, making one blind, and that it can be weaponized.

"Human, human, human!"

"Nuh! Drakkkn! _(click)-phuh_ (click)-uudt drakkkn!" The claim is a strong one, convinced, but there is still a crack in there somewhere, a desperation to make it true.

" _Hu-man,_ " he drawls again.

This time the answer comes from the dragon, dominant and enraged, screaming loudly and fervently at him _No! Listen you not-human dragon-Hiccup mine dragon good dragon fierce angry mine beloved-mine dragon! Bad human you! No! Bad lies angry rage not-human mine Hiccup dragon-love mine silence you bad lying human angry silence you!_ By the end, his ears are ringing and he can't help squirming a little at the pain of claws digging into the crease of his shoulders, which seems even worse since he can't feel much else being nearly buried under the snow by said dragon.

When the dragon-roars subside, he can hear angry cawing and croaking, screaming back at the Fury _You! You! You! Angry! Enemy! Ours! Ours! Go-away! Flock-Ours! Protect! Go-away! Attack! Attack! Bad! Enemy!_ It's a wholly different kind of sound from a dragon's voice, but some things are universal and need no translation.

The dragon and rider both growl and yowl in return _Angry irritated human bad! Defend why you defend why? Go-away us big fierce you small annoying!_ and he feels the weight of the dragon roll back from its forelegs and onto its haunches. He uses the moment of distraction to try and push himself up and get out from under the dragon's claws, but just as quickly as its attention left him, it comes back full force and forces him back into the dirt. The weight crashing down on his back again makes it flare up and pain strike all the way up his spine like a bolt of lightning.

He doesn't scream or let tears come to his eyes - he has long ago learned not to give his tormentors the satisfaction - but he can't help a harsh gasp from escaping his lips or his single eye from rolling into his skull from the force of the wave that hits him, all of it pain and dizziness and nausea. He's already started to shiver from the cold, but the convulsive tremble that goes through his body has nothing to do with the temperature.

It's the first time he notices a recoil from the dragon, just before its weight leaves him entirely, leaping back with hind legs. Even with the dragon gone, his back feels hot like a furnace. He can hear snow crunching, the dragon moving, and a noise of confusion, no doubt at the blood that had soaked through his shirt. He couldn't be bothered to move far, only getting up enough to roll into his back. The cold stung sharply at it, but he knew that the benefits outweighed the unpleasantries.

The pain wasn't ever what got to him the most anyway, it was the nausea and lightheadedness.

 _Hurt? You hurt?_ the dragon whistles in question, unsure. _You hurt not-me hurt you?_ He supposes the confusion is understandable enough. Even with its claws digging into him, the dragon hadn't been forceful enough to cause wounds.

 _Not-you_ , he answers. He knows crow/raven-speak the best, but he likes dragon-speak more. It's easier to make the proper sounds.

This seems to come as much more of a shock to the dragon and rider than anything else, the two of them yelping curiously _you speak you? Speak dragon you?_

He's sure if he sat up and looked, their eyes would be large, but it isn't important enough to make the effort just for that. His back is still pulsing despite the snow starting to chill and numb it and his head is swimming. Occasionally he can still see one of his crows or ravens fluttering overhead, angrily making a raucous.

He grunts out a _yes of-course_ as if it should be the most obvious thing in the world. He's long ago grown bored with the curiosity and surprise of dragons that aren't used to humans speaking to them in a way that is normally understood.

 _You dragon-speak you how?_ There's suspicion.

He's used to that too.

He snorts a sound that's like a _none-of-your-business_ dismissal. Explaining new things to dragons over and over is too much of a hassle. There are things they understand and other things that they _just don't_. They don't commit to knowing things outside of what is an immediate threat or an advantage, other than that those things are _new_ and _strange_ and sometimes _wonderful_ or _good_ to them or occasionally met with _distaste_ or _something-to-avoid_. That is part of why, although dragon-speak comes easier to his throat, he prefers crows and ravens. They can think better in abstract. He likes dragons well enough, but he still thinks corvids are comparatively smarter (though most humans he finds are dumber still than both on a normal standard, if her opinion were to matter on anything).

Grimacing, he stick his blade in the ground as leverage to pull himself up, able to at least see the other two - if barely - over the snow, and partly only because so much of it has been flung aside by the dragon's own mass when it had been pinning him there.

 _You dragon-speak why hunt trap dragons? Dragon-speak you trick you lie hunting dragons easier?_ They speak in as much vocals as movements and showing-pretending, and they don't trust him, which is fine, because the feeling is mutual, at least concerning the human who denies being human.

The short answer is both yes and no, he supposes. The long answer is he's stuck with people who do it, so by default he has to as well. He doesn't particularly like it, but he's come to accept it. This is what humans just do on a normal basis. It's nothing personal against dragons, but when he sabotages traps or manages to free dragons and sick them back on those humans... oh, that - _that_ \- is _very_ personal.

He scowls, letting the message of _annoyance_ leak through his expression, silently communicating a _no_ with the single look as if he is explaining something simple and stupid to small children who know nothing. The snow is coming down more heavily than before, graying the sky and threatening a stronger storm on the way. If not for being slowed down by the dragon-and-rider, he could have found shelter by now and already been working on collecting things to make a fire. Instead, he was bleeding and half-frozen, and nowhere near as far away from Viggo's crew as he wanted to be.

Standing was a battle he was peeved he even had to fight, having to try more than once on account his legs didn't want to cooperate, and swaying when he managed to stay on his feet.

The dragon and rider were both still watching him, and in irritation, he whirled and snarled _Go away! Away you not follow annoyance you pests!_

They don't leave immediately, pacing a wide half-circle in indecision and chattering _no no you human hunter dragon traps! You why you hunt? Hunting dragons still you? Threat! Dragons not-yours you pfikingr bad hunting dragons us stop you!_

Fed up with them both, he caws out a _Chase! Out! Dragon threats! Get-out chase!_ at his feathered companions perched on trees, already hunched and poised to launch at the dragon and rider again at the slightest provocation. They happily oblige, diving and pecking at the rider and dragon-man who snarl and swat at them. At the same time, he advances with his blade pointed, snarling another _Get-out you! Annoyance! Go!_ at them.

They finally seem to get the message and leap skyward, flying away with the birds still at their tail chasing them for a ways. He's done with humans and at the moment even with dragons. The irritation still prickles at him, as most things do long after they're done with, but he tries to forget about it and focus on more important things, like finding a place to shelter from the snowstorm that's undoubtedly coming and make up a fire to keep warm. Then, soon as it clears, he's resolved to run far as his legs can take him, even if he has to cross the entire damn frozen ocean to do it.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow  
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic  
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics**

* * *

The small scar-faced, dragon-speaking _pfikingr_ orders them to go away, advancing with his sharp-claw and cawing to make the ravens swoop at them, and the two of them do fly away, but not far.

The ravens complain and chase them, but the birds are little more than a nuisance, and no matter if the scar-faced human can speak like a dragon and ravens both, he still cannot _fly_. That is a true thing. It is as much their safety as it is their joy, a place to be where they cannot be hunted just as much as it is a place to be because flying is the _best_ thing.

Now though, they cannot fly, hunting and flirting with the wind in happy tumbles and glides. The air is bitter-cold and lazily, patiently tries to pull dragons down from the sky. It is harder to fly when it is cold. The air moves down and the nip of frost on wings makes them difficult to move after a time.

On clear days when the sun slinks low across the winter horizon, it is not always bad to be out of the nest, but now the clouds have come to darken even the daytime sky. Snow drifts down from the unending expanse of clouds and makes it too unsafe for them to remain out in the open or they might freeze, and the nest is too far from where they are to return before being caught in a storm.

For now, much as they hate to, they will have to find shelter on this island of dragon traps and bad humans who hunt their kind.

They do not like humans much at all, and they like ones who hunt and hurt dragons even less so, but they cannot help but think of the scar-faced human who speaks as they do. _Speaks_ and _understands_.

It is a strange and new thing. That Hiccup is human in body goes unmentioned - he cannot help the shape he was born with, but he is dragon. That is truth. He has spent all of his life among dragons, all of his life _being_ a dragon and doing as they do, and Toothless has always been at his side to make them two-who-are-one. One being who is two, because together they are better than only one, even as they _are_ one.

The scar-faced human is not a dragon. He is _pfikingr_. He lays traps and hunts dragons who become caught in them.

Yet he speaks as dragons do.

Used the sounds that their dragon-family make to _mock_ and _scold_ him as human!

Hiccup knows that humans do not accept him as the dragon he is and has always been. Uh strrrTT stalked and lured and tried to talk to him in _pfikingr_ words once. The St-t-t-t-t-KK had tried to take him away from his Toothless-self because he considers Hiccup a _human_ hatchling.

But he is not! He is still a dragon!

He knows just a little bit though that Uh strrrTT and S-t-t-t-t-t-KK do not mean to hurt, even though they did at one point. They want him to be part of their nest. They try to consider him like their own and convince him to stay and have made peace with dragons who were once enemies. They try to make him be one of them because S-t-t-t-t-t-KK once thought of their mother as his mate even though they know that Cloudjumper was her mate.

This time is not the same, and they will not overlook the danger that a speaking-tricking hunter of dragons poses.

How the Scar-Faced _pfikingr_ knows to speak as dragons do does not matter. He uses the words to speak _lies_ and _hurt_ , to surprise and trick, and he hunts dragons as enemies. He can make the sounds, and he can understand, but he is a threat.

That he leaves behind other _pfikingr_ who are part of his flock to go on his own, when the winter snow starts to howl and he bleeds from wounds, is perplexing, but something that they don't ponder long. It does not matter. What is important is that he be chased away from dragons and stopped from hurting them.

They fly just far enough away to placate the ravens into flying back to their dragon-bird-speaking human, and then they turn back to follow, and watch for caves where they can take shelter when the snowfall becomes bad.

They choose cliffs as their perch to prowl instead of spend a great deal flying, Toothless keeping his wings close where maybe his heart-fire can keep them from freezing as badly. Only occasionally does he stretch and flutter his wings to clear the distance of farther clefts, while Hiccup rolls with the motions of his stalking.

They can see the snow trail, and as they follow it from above, they soon see the small _pfikingr_ too, trudging away from where the two-who-are-one had seen resting ships and _pfikingr_ settlements. For as far as they can see from their perch, there are no other humans following since both of them together fought and chased away the hunters. Now there is only the one.

The snow falls harder and starts to make it difficult to keep watching and following, but they see the Scar-Face turn and climb up some of the snow-caked rocks and disappear down the throat of a cave, the ravens who followed and watched and occasionally croaked a complaint going inside as well. Now the snow is getting far worse, and both feel it biting at their scales.

They need to take shelter too, and the closest place is the same where their enemy went into.

They reassure each other that they aren't afraid. They are _together_ , and they are fast and strong and clever. The mouth makes the cave look like it is probably big inside, and they can be sneaky and camouflaged in the dark just as well as they can be fierce and powerful.

Inside, the rising roar of the snow becomes muffled, and they are right to have thought the cave large and deep. Following it and keeping their senses alert for the Scar-Face or what could be an ambush or might be the home of other dragons, they do not vocalize.

Now they are hunters too, and they must be silent.

Toothless stops for a moment, still as stone except for lifting his head to scent the air and listen. Hiccup does not know exactly what it might be that his Toothless _-most-beloved_ smells or hears that he cannot, but he knows without asking that it most likely has to do with their target. That he cannot hear or smell as strongly as his dragon-partner matters little. There are things Hiccup can do that even Toothless, who is the best of dragons, cannot do, and Toothless listens and scents for them both.

He feels Toothless crouch forward, stretching long and lean with belly-scales just barely not touching and scraping on stone, and Hiccup follows his motion, crouching low across the back of his dragon- _love_ 's neck.

As they move through the dark, he hears something, straining his ears. He knows the sound. It is like the soft lick of a wave and _plop_ of hitting the surface of water, not exact but similar, like when a fish leaps out after a bug and falls back under the surface. They keep moving until they see the shape, the cave dark but not too much to see shapes, and one of them is moving.

They go still, waiting and watching to make certain they are not detected, before moving forward again more slowly, being mindful of pawsteps making a sound that might alert their enemy before they can get close. Hiccup knows that they could easily lunge in to attack or try again to scare the Scar-Face into running, but Toothless does not make the leap and he does not snarl to announce them. Hiccup does neither of these things himself, knowing that there must be a reason why his dragon-half has not made a move yet.

He hears Toothless softly huffing and looks in the direction of the smaller moving figure, which is hunched and showing its back. There's movement over its shoulder and a wet _slap_ sound that draws his curiosity.

Their sneaky prowling becomes thwarted when one of the ravens swoops at them and caws angrily, making the Scar-Face jolt up and look straight at them, snarling.

 _You! You! Go away warned angry rage away you! Fierce angry fight threatening fight you!_ the Scar-Face spat in their direction, quickly grabbing for his long sharp-claw to use against them.

They spread themselves big, wings fully out and arched up on their toes. Toothless alone is big compared to this small, anger-spitting _pfikingr_ , but together they are even bigger and more intimidating. Toothless whistles fire in his throat as a warning, but is no less ready to blast fire if it comes to that. For now it is only intimidation, to make the small enemy rethink attacking them and instead to surrender and flee.

The purple blasting-fire lights up the cave so that they can see their enemy better, and for Hiccup more than Toothless, the moment startles him as it first did Toothless when they had pounced onto their enemy and pinned him to the snow.

He is very thin-small from hunger, near curled over himself at the edge of a melt-pool without his fur and cloth coverings on the top half of his body, and there are scars all over his unprotected soft-skin, so many that they almost completely overtake the body like the greedy spread of thorny brambles.

What causes his surprise most is that the Scar-Face is covered all over in blood, and they know it is his own because he is wounded-pale and there are long, swollen-open gashes all the way down his back. The gashes cover all the way from the shoulders almost down to his legs, and many of them are deep and crisscrossed with each other.

He squares himself in his crouch and snarls with _Fight!_ and _Me dangerous!_ , but it is all bluffs. He is trying to be fierce and scare them away, but he is like a prey-thing at the end of a long hunt that has lost, cornered and too hurt-exhausted to struggle properly.

Toothless swallows his fire and relaxes his wings, though they are not foolish enough to throw away caution. A caught prey-thing can still strike a last painful blow to dragons who are careless.

They know that these are not wounds that were caused by either of them, so they can't help but wonder from where the injuries came. The most likely seems like perhaps another dragon, or that they could be from a bear. Something large and with many sharp claws.

Dragons have many scars and Hiccup knows most of the ones that belong to his kin in the nest. He has always been the one to care for wounds, especially those made by _pfikingr_ , either by traps or sharp-claws. Dragons earn scars often, and most often they come from humans, and often times dragons give humans wounds of their own.

 _Curious wary peace no-fight you distrust still hate bad dragon hunter you curious wounds hurt dragon claws hurt you that?_

Because the Scar-Face is a human who traps dragons and he is small, it only seems natural that a dragon would eventually hurt him back.

The answer is not what they expected.

 _Humans!_

He makes only the one sound for them, but the sound is also filled with many other sounds and feelings and posture that says so much. The tone of his voice speaks of _disdain loathing HATRED_. The sharp arch of bony shoulders and toothy-snarling face adds to it _enemies not-welcome fight fierce attack!_ even though he does not lunge or move after anything. The one eye that he has is sharp and focused, wishing _death kill enemies HATE hunt hurt_.

They feel it like a wave, almost a distant echo of the force that an Alpha's command holds when it reaches into their being as dragons, only different. It's a raw swelling of something strong that goes far beyond revulsion and malice, a foaming-at-the-mind _hunger_ that wants to hunt and hurt beyond any natural sense at nothing more than just the thought of enemies.

It is an overpowering will of madness that makes them stagger back in shock, more than it is finding out that what the he- _pfikingr_ reviles most of all are his own kind. It is much akin to facing against the dragon-eater queen, only if the dragon-eater queen was small and her voice not as loud, filled with something deep and unquenchable and dark, ready to greedily devour everything in its path with snapping jaws and without mercy because that is all that it knows.

Even to Hiccup, who does not like humans for the hurt they cause his dragon-family, it feels like a wrong-thing, just as the vicious Queen who ate her own flock and even tried to hunt hatchlings instead of being a good alpha and protecting her nest was a wrong-thing.

Hiccup though is still able to see outside himself and empathize with others.

That the Scar-Face taunted and snarled at him in hate of appearing human is a hurt that he does not want to think about, but it is a hurt that he can push away when his Toothless _-beloved-self_ and Cloudjumper- _mate-of-their-mother_ and the good King and all the nest croon and reassure and tell him what a _good dragon_ he is no matter what humans may sometimes see in him. He has scars from falls and scars from traps that he was slightly too slow to keep from biting him, and he has scars that cannot be seen but felt.

But he does not have scars like the ones this human has. He is not marked by so many that there looks to be more scars than soft-skin. He has not lost important parts as this _pfikingr_ has lost an eye where he can no longer see. He has never been gored under the claws of his dragon-kin who are his flock, and absolutely never so deeply or by so many swipes as this one has been.

These hurting marks are done by other humans, he knows now.

This is why he fled away from his human flock instead of towards them, Hiccup thinks he realizes.

This is why he looked at and snapped sharp words at Hiccup with hate where he did not with Toothless whose shape is what its supposed to be.

What is still uncertain to him is _why_.

He does not understand what reason there could be for humans to hurt their own in that kind of way, unless he is _not_ of their flock. Even then, he cannot see how so many scars from so long ago could be left if he were merely a lone human being warded off by _pfikingr_ who are not friendly to him and did not want him in their territory.

He has only seen scars like these on dragons that were kept and fought and bullied by the Knotted Man for a very long time.

Hiccup thinks then that the Scar-Faced human must belong to a very bad alpha who has given many reasons to distrust other humans, even if Hiccup is only so in shape, just as Hiccup distrusts humans because they hurt and kill dragons who he has always lived amongst even though he was not born from a dragon's egg.

He is not unsympathetic, and least of all when it comes to a mutual distaste for _pfikingr_ enemies.

Hiccup slides from Toothless's shoulders into an apologetic crouch at the bigger dragon's flank, whimpering _peace calm no-threat you hurt humans hurt sorry sorry sympathy understand not-want-to-fight good dragons us no hurt no fight._

The Scar-Face is not convinced at all, remaining edgy and glaring only at him and seeing only _human_ , so Hiccup sits up and rubs soft-skin against Toothless's scaled cheek, crooning _dragons us both good dragons Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss love love together dragons me dragon too not-like bad humans yes?_ and Toothless reaffirms with a throaty purr _yes yes mine Hiccup good dragon yes clever little mine good protector-of-dragon-family yes Hiccup good best dragon_.

Even with Toothless confirming it, the Scar-Face disputes it, spitting back at him in disdain _Human!_

Hiccup shook his head like flicking away annoying insects, hissing back _Dragon! Me dragon not human dragon me dragon family love love love humans bad killers-of-dragons don't-like me fight break traps help dragons me dragon too! Hiccup Toothless together dragons you me we us Tt-(click)-th-phuh-ss yes together dragons best dragons!_

The Scar-Face still does not believe him, mocking back _human you bad you too not-dragon you bad human_ and Hiccup can only snarl _frustration!_ in return. He is _not_ a human. Humans _hurt_ dragons, which he does not.

 _Stubborn bad you listen here dragon me!_

Toothless presses a nose into his flank and reminds him _yes good dragon you love you love you_ and tries to push aside his frustration breathing _easy calm love you good dragon you yes yes yes love you not-listen lies good dragon you truth._

Hiccup appreciates it, and he pets Toothless back with a soft paw, huffing out _yes yes know-that sorry stubborn frustrated_.

It irritates him, but he can see things from the other side of this because that is a side he has been on himself in some ways. He would not trust anything he thinks of as human either. Even with Uh strrrTT and the red-furred alpha S-t-t-t-t-t-t-KK who thinks of Hiccup as his own hatchling he does not completely trust, even if he does not think of them as he thinks of most other _pfikingr_.

Whether because he has figured out that they are not a threat to him now or he is too weary now to put up a defensive display, the Scar-Face does not posture as if to fight them and his attention partly leaves them. They see now that he is using the water from the pool to wash his wounds, awkwardly angling to reach them with a piece of cloth that's been soaked.

He is trying to look as if he's ignoring them, but he is still watching out of the corner of his eye.

They don't know exactly what to do now. They followed the Scar-Faced smaller human intending on scaring him away from dragons and sending him back to his flock but instead they have found him trying to hide and lick his wounds and wanting to run from humans who caused it and from the icy storm that hunts anything foolish enough to be caught in it. Other than waiting out the weather, there is not much reason to be here.

Still, one thing continues to itch at their thoughts, that being that the Scar-Face still tried to close in on a dragon caught in a trap, and they do not know if he will try to trap dragons even if he is alone.

At least with the Scar-Face able to easily understand and respond to them in a way they do as well, it makes it that much easier to ask.

 _You human you hunting trapping dragons back-there you?_ Hiccup indicated a direction to where they had come from and where he and his Toothless-half had first pounced at the Scar-Faced and fought and chased him away.

The small man glanced at him and huffed _irritation_ and _no_ , but he did not go on to say anything else, turning a shoulder to them as if to indicate that talking to them wasn't worth his time.

Even more significantly than that, he has turned his wounded back on them. Hiccup would not trust to turn his back even on human allies and he would certainly not expose wounds to them, never mind showing them to enemies. Showing wounds to an enemy would be as foolish as showing his throat and belly and expecting an enemy would not strike at them. He had made the mistake of turning his back on Uh strrrTT only once, and at the time that had come with much greater wounds than any sharp-claw could deliver.

Maybe, then, they are not as much enemies as they first thought, even if it is a very foolish thing to do. Hiccup thinks with a spark of elation, however small, that maybe he is being regarded more as a dragon than a human after all, even though the Scarred-Face insisted on calling him human.

He plays with an idea like rolling a rock back and forth between his paws, not having given the possibility much thought before as he had been stuck on the conclusion of the Scar-Faced man being just another trapper.

 _You breaking traps?_

He didn't receive an answer, Hiccup snorting with annoyance and taking to pacing slightly, his claws clicking on stone. He knows the Scarred-Face could answer if he wanted, but he was pretending not to hear now.

The pacing reminded Hiccup of his own shoulder and the earlier bite of the Scar-Face's sharp-claw so that he stopped and felt for the wound in inspection. It was not deep, but it would take many days to heal, and there was still also the slash that crossed his nose. His eyes traveled towards the water and he tilted his head, thinking.

He does not really _need_ to use the water to clean up his wounds, but chooses to skirt around to the other side of the pool away from the Scarred-Face anyway to where he is not shown the other's back and so not as easy to ignore. Toothless moves with him and sits just behind, watching for any signs of a threat for Hiccup while he dips is paws into the cold water and brings it up to the scratch on his face and the bite to his shoulder.

Hiccup is not without watching himself though, eyes flicking up and keeping interest in the sharp-claw that the Scar-Face is still holding onto. He knows still that even though the other is smaller, he is still quick in his strikes. The Scar-Face watches him tensely too, scrunching his nose with the hints of a snarl ready to be voiced.

Hiccup tries to pretend not to notice him and that he is only right there for the water, but after a while he tries again.

 _You breaking traps freeing dragons you?_

The Scarred-Face growls _annoyed pest you_ and _go away!_ but Hiccup ignores it like his question was ignored twice now. Instead he tries to mimic how he has seen crafty fledglings who know they are bothering make themselves look innocent and unaware that usually charms bigger dragons into tolerating them anyway, rolling partway towards his side and tilting his head with a wondering whistle.

 _Curious wondering look-at-me want-to-know human you trapping? Not trapping? You human hate human like dragon yes? Freeing dragons human traps you? Curious tell-me! Please?_

Hiccup moves just as fast in retreating as the Scar-Face does in sitting up and looking bigger, snarling _yes_ and _go away annoying you hate you!_ in the same breath. Still, it gave him the answer he wanted.

 _You dragon friend helping dragons yes maybe?_ Hiccup presses, though he doesn't move closer again, not wanting to risk another slash of the longer sharp-claw.

The Scar-Face shakes himself in disregard, clicking in annoyance and turning away from the water with a look in his one eye that deeply unsettles them both but that they aren't sure why.

He takes his _pfikingr_ things with him and retreats away from them, turning his back again. They see him taking strips of cloth and tying them around his body in near-silence, growling complaints beneath his breath, and now he really is ignoring them instead of only pretending. When he's finished, he wraps himself up again in a dark colored fur he was wearing before and falls on his side to sleep as if they are not there.

From a distance, they aren't so worried about him, but they dare not come close and investigate him even if he _is_ asleep in case he lashes out with a sharp-claw again. Instead they turn their attention to finding a good place nearby to rest themselves as they wait out the storm outside, finding a ledge higher up than the rest of the cave and not easy to climb so that the Scar-Face cannot sneak up on them while they are resting.

With a soft huff, Hiccup wriggles to get comfortable in the shadow of one of Toothless's wings. Hopefully the storm will not last too long, but in winter they can never be sure.


	5. Chapter 5

**The Human Dragon and the Estranged Crow  
A How To Train Your Dragon fanfic  
Based off of Le'letha's "Nightfall" and "Stormfall" fics**

* * *

Taking shelter in a dark cave with a blizzard raging outside, his back bleeding, and no kind of fire for warmth regardless of having a dragon occupying the same space was downright miserable.

Sleep offers no solace.

If anything, sleeping only brings him more strife. He hates to sleep, as that is where the nightmares linger, just waiting for him to fall unconscious before slithering from the shadows at the back of his mind like serpents ready to strike with venomous fangs.

He is never unaware of those awful imaginings simply lying in wait, and he tries to avoid them like the plague, but everyone has to sleep eventually. He is no exception to that.

There is no concept of time passing when the nightmares sink their teeth into him. There is only the _too long, too much, have to escape..._

There are blurs and hints of times and places he only vaguely remembers because he doesn't want to recall, faceless phantoms that hover like vultures to a kill and swoop down when he's most vulnerable. There is begging and whimpering - _his_ pleas - and there is running and struggling and fighting, and all of it is entirely in vain.

It doesn't stop the hurt. The strikes still come. He tries to shrink away, to disappear, but there's nowhere to go. He tries to curl into himself, but in trying to protect one part of his body, he let's another part be hurt instead. He cries and yelps because it is painful, and then he learns to be silent because knowing he is pained makes them do even worse. He learns not to complain or to speak about the aches all over, because to voice against his punishments is to be ungrateful for their 'lessons' and be dolled yet another. He stops asking questions on what he has done wrong because he should simply _know_ if only he were good and smart enough, as he's been told so, so many times.

He only wants to survive. He wants to not be hit for being bad. He wants to not be something worthless and unlovable. He wants to stop being afraid.

So he makes himself obedient. Quiet. Out of the way.

He tries, and he tries, and he tries. He does everything to try and make them happy, to do good things that mean he doesn't need to be punished.

The hurts still never stop. He tries harder.

It isn't enough.

Until one day it's more than enough.

 _Enough_ hurting. _Enough_ fearing. _Enough_ placating. _Enough, enough, enough!_

But it isn't, and it doesn't stop the hitting, the cutting, the bruising, breaking, kicking, bleeding, sneering, lashing, tearing-

But he gives it back. He makes them hurt, and he gets hurt in return. He knows then. He's figured it out. That's simply what it is to be what he is: a human.

He will never not be bad, because _humans_ are bad, and that is what he is. He will always be hurt, because that is all that humans care to do, and he will cause hurt. It's an ugliness that he was born with too, and he can't escape that, and that is why he's punished. Why he has always been _abomination; worthless; stupid; can't-do-anything-right; good-for-nothing; parasite; freak; wretch; slave._

He tries to strike back, tries to defend himself against the _monsters_ that look like he does, the kind of monster that he is also, but he is smaller and weaker and tired beyond possibility. For every hit he lands and drop of blood he draws, many more are returned back on him. It's a losing battle, but he fights and tries to hurt them more because that is just what he is supposed to do, just as is done to him.

This time, the enemies are only imagined, but they are no less real. They exist out there somewhere, and they can still hurt him even when they are gone. They still lurk in his memory, waiting only for him to close his eyes and drop his guard, and then they come for him and remind him all over again.

When he finally manages to wake, his body protests as if the blows were real. His joints pinch as he tries to uncurl from the tight, self-protective ball he coiled himself into on instinct, and his breathing comes strained with the stress and the terror that he involuntarily caused on himself.

He is _not_ afraid. He will _not_ be hurt again. He has learned. He can be quick and smarter than all of them. He can hurt and kill them before they can to him.

He will _never_ be that small, pathetic, whimpering play-thing of vicious devils ever again. The gashes across his back now will be the very last.

Hanging his head, Faulklin took a moment to compose himself, fatigue still tugging temptingly at his body. The blood loss had taken its toll, but it was a state of condition he had learned to cope with long ago. So long as he was careful about how he went about it, he could stubbornly push his way through the light-headedness. If it turned out that he was far too gone to just force himself to keep moving until he got better, then oh well. He could think of worse things than perishing at this point. It wasn't as though he had anything in particular to live or aim for, and no one would mourn. Many would celebrate, more than anything.

Lifting his head, he sluggishly turned to look towards the entrance of the cave where the storm had considerably lightened, and where the dragon and dragon-man from the day before sat and peered outside, the Fury's tail idly sweeping from side to side.

Why they hadn't just gone was beyond him, but he didn't really care either way. What use was a dragon and some crazy lunatic to him anyway?

He internally scoffed at the thought as he sat up and pulled his drying shirt back on, his memory colored with sharp annoyance at everything that had transpired the day before, but then he really started to think about it.

What use _could_ a Night Fury and its crazy rider have to him?

More importantly, what use could it have to _Viggo_?

Faulklin had tried many times, both with Viggo and others, to flee. He hadn't exactly had the best results, and now was no different. He felt as if he would collapse any second, and the bleeding was bad. He'd be lucky just to make it outside of the cave, much less miles away without dropping dead. He wasn't so much worried about the _dropping dead_ outcome. It was the possibility that he would be found and dragged back to continue to serve that concerned him the most.

The Hunters would almost _definitely_ find him. It was only a matter of time before they did, and _when_ they did, he was going to suffer for it. He knew that for a fact.

If he made himself suddenly all the more valuable, however...

His eye trained onto the Night Fury. One of the rarest of all breeds in the known world. Viggo would never pass up such a valuable creature, if he could only get his hands on it.

That dragon would _easily_ be able to buy his freedom in one way or another, no strings attached. He only has to figure out how to accomplish that.

Distracting him from these thoughts, one of the ravens landed on his shoulder, immediately taking to preening at his hair and reaching to nibble at his lips with its beak.

 _You. You. Here! Me, here. Over-here._ _Scared-distressed, you. Sleep-hunted. Make-better. Ours-flock. Love you, love you._

Scratching behind the bird's head and leaning his face against black feathers, he warbled back _Appreciation. Love you. No distress. Fine, fine. You-and-you, here._

The other raven landed next to him, looking towards the entrance and warning _dragon!_

Faulklin turned to look, scowl returned. Both the Night Fury and its rider were looking at him, eyes large and unconcerned, speaking _curious wondering watching_ and the dragon huffing out through its nose. The rider, crouched between the dragon's front legs, slipped from underneath the Fury's belly and stopped after a few four-legged paces, sitting up and looking at him.

He hates that lunatic's staring.

He postures _uncertain_ _alert wary don't-like standoffish caution watching ready-to-flee_ but his green eyes are shining with _wondering curious hesitant pondering thinking planning-wanting-something._

It's the _planning-wanting something_ that sets off alarms in his head. He doesn't need to know the crazy, feral dragon man. He knows that look. He doesn't like it.

But maybe he can use it all the same.

He growls throatily _What? You? Looking. What?_ He doesn't even have to feign annoyance. That comes naturally.

The dragon man whistles and tilts his head inquiringly, forming out the sound "drakkkn", flicking his head in an _outside_ motion, and wondering _where?_

Faulklin only shakes his head, not knowing what in Hel the guy wants. The dragon-man seems to catch on, shifting and regrouping his thoughts - Faulklin can see it in his eyes. He motions _outside_ and makes an angry-spitting noise he recognizes as something like _hunters humans_ and then repeats _dragons_ , making a biting motion with arched fingers and making an _alert_ noise, which Faulklin discerns as _traps_ , and then repeats again _where?_

When Faulklin shakes his head again, despite understanding, the feral growls low at him _you know you know you!_

Of course he knows where Viggo's trappers are. That doesn't mean he wants to go anywhere near them again. It doesn't mean he's inclined to show this dragon-man and his _pet_ where they are.

But he knows his chances of getting caught and brought back, and they're high, so maybe, a change in tactic would help. Maybe, for once, he'll go back... but Viggo is tricky, and whatever he comes up with is going to take a lot to pull off, he knows. Of all people, Viggo is the only one who's been a true obstacle in a battle of wit, and unfortunately Faulklin loses to his experience more often than not.

Its a risk, but so is trying to run like always and hoping it will work out for him better this time.

The dragon-man, ever persistent and looking annoyed with him, paced with clawed gloves clicking on stone, rumbling out _you know you know trap breaking now now? Dragons hurt trapped help you help where where?_

Faulklin only fixed him with an irritated stare that had the other man stop his pacing and sit abruptly, glaring back at him in a kind of battle of wills. Finally, Faulklin closed his eye and sighed out heavily through his nose, bracing his hands on his knees as he staggered to his feet. The rider swung up onto the Fury's shoulders as the dragon whirled to dash out of the cave ahead of him, the two disappearing outside. When Faulklin stepped out of the cave mouth and into the leafless woods, he glanced up over his shoulder and found them perched on a higher cliff watching and waiting for him to emerge.

He snorted out an unintelligible grunt at the two of them before starting to walk, following the indent of a frozen stream.

Fine. He can't get rid of Viggo and the Hunters, and now he can't get rid of some crazy dragon-speaking feral man... but maybe he can make them get rid of each other for him. He just has to think up the _how_.

First he has to think up a good story for why he came back, because its not like him. He'll normally fight tooth and nail to get away no matter how foolish or reckless. His alibi has to be convincing.

The truth, or at least part of it, is as good as anything. He wouldn't be able to get away. He's tried and failed enough times to have established that. Viggo will question it though. He's stubborn, and that hasn't ever stopped him before, and he's always been of the mind to keep trying at it until either _this_ time he succeeds or dies trying. So he needs to have another good reason why he came to that conclusion against all past pattern.

He ponders it for a while, and decides that it would be reasonable to claim winter-hungry animals had come after him. He'd been chased and attacked by a predator, and he'd pulled his wounds, and had nothing to really patch them back up with adequately. He could have just kept going and bled out, and wouldn't have cared about dying, but it would slow him down enough he'd be easy to track and take back... so he might as well save the trouble, and the punishment. Viggo doesn't appreciate set-backs that cost coin, but Faulklin isn't so much worried about him as the others in the crew who are fed-up and have nowhere near the kind of patient discretion as their leader.

Mostly, he was just worried his wounds would slow him down too much to make it anywhere, and he'd be caught before the wounds killed him, and face more brutality than if he just gave himself up.

 _That_ would be a convincing argument, at least.

So he has his cover story, sort of. But then he has to figure out what he's going to do about the Fury and the other dragons that Viggo has.

The biggest problem working against him will be his history. He's turned dragons back on the Hunters and others before them any number of times. Kind of easy when he can speak and understand them. If he brings up the Night Fury, Viggo won't trust that it isn't a trap, probably. Maybe he doesn't need to bring it up at all. Maybe he needs to just let it loose on them, then slip away amongst the chaos.

If he does that, or they do, and he tries to run and fails though, he'll have double the torment to look forward to.

So he can't stage an attack and hope it will be enough to let him escape, especially as there's no guarantee they'll catch it when it does attack.

He could bring them in with him as faux prisoners... or even real prisoners. That, however, would require getting them to play along, and he doesn't know that they will, especially if they don't think its just a plot to one-up the Hunters. Which it may be, or maybe he'll just decide to make a legitimate trade. He's still weighing his options.

Even if he manages to get one or both on board, its possible Viggo will immediately see right through his strategy. Rather, its more than likely he will. Viggo is clever, and most of all, he knows how _other_ people think. It's that which is most dangerous, and its also that which is going to take the most consideration. To act as he normally would is predictable, but to act differently based on trying to _not_ be predictable is even more so. It's a unique challenge, and he hates it, because every direction he looks, when Viggo is involved, he finds an insurmountable wall. With nowhere left to turn, the only viable option is to give up and roll over.

And because of that...

That's it.

Viggo's strategy is, inevitably, always about outlasting his opponents, whittling their defenses and willingness to combat him down until they don't have anything left to fight with. He loses battles, certainly, but he's always sure to win wars by the end.

That, as far as Faulklin can tell, is also his weakness. Viggo is cautious, smart, but also very self-assured of his victory, and everyone loses to him. How strange would it be if Faulklin were to have reached a point of submission as well?

True, he'd played subservient before, and rarely did he mean it when he did, but everyone breaks. Viggo has _definitely_ managed to wear him down, but so have others. Yet, all the same, for all his rebellion, he knows to a certain degree that submission would be the _smart_ thing to do, he simply doesn't want to. That doesn't mean he can't push back his pride and fake finally losing out.

How exactly he'll play out how he plans to use the Fury and its rider is still up in the air, but he has at least a few options. He'll have to test the waters with Viggo first, figure out which direction to take it. However, what he has decided on at the very least is that he will mention it to Viggo.

He couldn't see Viggo being _disinterested_ in such a find. He could even claim that the winter-hungry animal he was attacked by was the Fury itself. Perhaps the beast had a broken wing, and thus was hungry, but not as deadly as it would normally be in flight. Perhaps it had chased him on the ground, and he stumbled down a cave shaft hidden by the snow. That could be when he opened his wounds again.

He would still have to figure out where to go with the story from there... maybe the Fury fell in after him, and got stuck, but then if the Fury is spotted out and about, that would ruin his story. Of course the Fury could have always found a way to escape, but if it wing was as broken as he'd claimed, it flying around would also see his story fall to pieces. Then again, he could always claim he only thought its wing had been broken, or that maybe its wings were just too stiff from the cold to fly.

Yeah, that might work better.

Still, once he returns to Viggo with his story, he won't have as much easy freedom to move around and meet up with the Fury and rider to communicate his plans, assuming they even care for it.

Viggo, or at least Ryker, would probably want to send out a large party along with him, not let him out of their sights, and that would create its own problems. Knowing of the Night Fury, they'd be well prepared to deal with it as opposed to before, when even Faulklin was unaware of them.

They'll probably suspect a trap, because that would be too much like himself, and they may not be _wrong_ , per se.

Assuming even if he could convince them he isn't laying traps, or even to escort him as they no doubt may, much of it still hinges on the Fury and crazy man to follow his lead and not screw it up. They may not understand and do something too early, or perhaps too late, that ends well for none but Viggo himself. Likewise, they may just stab him in the back first chance they see and leave him for dead. Personally he wouldn't mind that if he thought he would actually, really die, but its not likely he will.

He's never that damn lucky.

Death isn't something he fears. If anything, he wishes for it; flirts with it; entertains it. Coming to the edge of a higher ice-caked ledge on his path, he couldn't help peering over the edge of it at the rocks below. It was easy enough to imagine, falling and breaking his neck or something similar, but knowing how things play out for him, it wouldn't do the job. He'd end up mangled, but that was about it. That's how things typically work for him. Somehow death always stays just out of reach, mocking him.

No, to die would be more a mercy than a tragedy as he sees it, but to _suffer_ \- that, he most certainly fears. Or did. He shook his head. No, he doesn't _fear_ it anymore. He isn't _afraid_ anymore. Damn be fears. Rather, its... what he _expects_ as the more likely of the two.

Its almost inevitably fated that he'll certainly suffer, but to reach a point of no return? There isn't a man or god that will grant him that yet, even should he find the drive to take the matter into his own hands. It never works out like that.

In short, he's cursed. There's no other way he can think to explain it.

Sighing, he turned and picked his way around it, trying to find a suitable path down.

Trailing thoughts are interrupted by the flicker of drifting snowflakes, single eye glancing upwards. He'd barely noticed the sky darken again with more thick clouds that promise further snowfall.

Maybe, in reality, he's wasting his time, but he's stubborn (then again, since when is a norseman not stubborn?). More than that, past pattern has always been that no matter what he tries, it won't work out the way he wants. If he gives up, someone will rip him back to his feet, and not in a way he would ever want. At the very least, if things don't work out, he can say honestly he's fought tooth and nail. Maybe that kind of committed failure and futile fighting is even more pathetic than simply submitting, but at least it brings him some personal satisfaction, for however long that lasts.

Shivering against the dropping temperature, he couldn't help thinking he should've made that damn dragon more useful and had it make him a _torch_ , though it might not have turned out to be a great help anyway. All the same, and as tempted as he was to just lie down in the snow and let himself freeze, reaching a fire back at Viggo's camp sounded absolutely divine.

Thankfully, it wasn't out of sight much longer, though still felt miles off compared with his frozen legs. Maybe it would've been quicker to catch some kind of ride from the beast to here. It might've solved a great many problems he was suffering right now.

Then again maybe jumping off that ledge further back would've solved just as many.

Or maybe drowning himself in the frozen ocean ahead. He was already so damn numb he'd probably be dead in seconds and not even notice it.

Scoffing at his own full-circle thoughts, more in frustration at how unobtainable he was sure it'd be, he trudged along down the slope towards the encampment and ships, half-sliding down it. He couldn't help wondering if the Fury and rider had followed him the entire way, glancing over his shoulder and squinting.

He was almost certain he'd seen a sleek black shape moving, but among the network of bare branches and tree trunks against pale sky, it was hard to be sure. It was soon enough forgotten as he approached the edge of camp, set up around the entrance of a cave where they'd properly set up residence for the time being.

He couldn't say he was happy at all to see the posted guards as he approached.

"Well look what the Nightmare dragged in," one sneered, brandishing a spear at him.

He met their squinting eyes with a glare and a scoff, but didn't otherwise rebel when one grabbed him tightly by the upper arm, wrenching it upwards.

"Thought the dragon might've eaten you. Shame that it didn't... heard you turned another wild beast loose on the hunting party. I wonder what the boys will have t' say about that now that you've come slinking back?"

Faulklin remained impassive under the threat, having known already to expect that. Besides, he wasn't concerned with small-fry with small brains.

"I want to see Viggo."

"Oh, I bet y'would."

 _Nice teeth_ , Faulklin couldn't help mentally chirping, unimpressed. _I've seen much bigger._

"Guess its sad for you then that Viggo's got more important matters to deal with than-"

"Than a Night Fury?" Faulklin interrupted, satisfied to see the man's expression turn. "I'll be sure to let him know you thought a highly rare, valuable prize unworthy of his attention. I do wonder how much of a financial loss that beast would be. What do you think?"

Suspicious looks followed. "What're you playin' at?"

"A business deal," Faulklin told him shortly. "Viggo _is_ a businessman, isn't he?"

The guard went to open his mouth, but the devil himself cut in first.

"And what sort of _business deal_ might that be?"

Good, now Faulklin didn't have to deal with placating the nobodies. It would be even nicer if the guard would let his arm go.

"Hello, Faulklin," Viggo greeted, his own dark eyes wondering. "Always good to see you come crawling back from the end of your leash."

"Can't very well bite the hand holding it by going the other way," Faulklin snarked in return, meeting the man's eyes with a spark of passive defiance.

"I see the cold has done nothing to numb your sarcasm." Viggo chuckled in the back of his throat and motioned inside. "Why don't you come inside. If you turn any whiter I'm afraid you'll vanish against the snow."

The guard clutching his arm growled testily, tightening his grip a little before finally letting go. Faulklin was sure to give the side of his knee a sharp stomp as he passed and was sure to pick up his pace enough to be out of reach by the time they whirled to make a grab. Likely it didn't escape Viggo's attention, but then Viggo doesn't have very high opinions of his underlings enough to care, so long as it doesn't interfere with his obtaining of coin.

Even before reaching the hearths inside, it was much warmer being out of the snow and wind, and he was starting to regret feeling returning to his limbs already. Still, the fires inside were alluring enough to ignore it, sitting near the flames and disregarding any chairs. With how light his head was feeling, he'd probably just face-plant off of one anyway, and he already had enough burn scars to speak of without that.

"So do correct me if I heard wrong, but did you say it was indeed a _Night Fury_ you had run across?" Viggo chipped in, taking a seat at a table nearby.

"Solid black as night and blasted off shots faster than any arrow. Unless you know of anything like that that isn't a Night Fury-" Faulklin faltered slightly at an involuntary yawn, "its the only thing it could be."

Viggo hummed thoughtfully. "Yes... well now that you mention it, I _did_ receive a curious report from the returning party. I simply wasn't sure exactly _what_ to believe. Hard to say exactly _what_ my men saw when you're involved." Faulklin didn't need to hear it to know of the unspoken distrust in the claim, but Viggo was waiting for him to fill in the details himself.

"It sprung out of hiding while we were checking traps." It wasn't a lie after all. "I got the Hel out of there before it could punch me full of holes. Can't say the same for the rest of the idiots, but then I didn't stick around long enough to find out."

"Entirely on purpose, I'm sure."

Faulklin didn't humor his call-out with a response.

"It came after me again," Faulklin continued. "I ended up falling through into a narrow ice cave where it couldn't fit, ripped my back open on the way down, stumbled my way back here."

 _That's it. Short and simple._

"Strange, to me, that you wouldn't just let the beast eat you," Viggo humored. "Seems to me more like a... well, a Faulklin thing to do."

Faulklin scoffed, having already known Viggo would challenge the integrity of his story. "I would've if the damn thing could've reached me."

Viggo smirked at the audible vexation dripping from his voice. "Pity things didn't work out for you then."

"Its not important," Faulklin harrumphed, tucking his arms to his chest and curling into his knees. "If its winter, the Fury probably lives around here. I could find where its hiding."

"A trade, is it? That dragon's freedom for yours?" Again with that humoring tone.

"You think your stupid henchmen are going to be able to catch the damn thing?" He cocked a brow in Viggo's direction.

"Catch it, perhaps... finding it may be another matter, though I'm sure we'll manage somehow."

Gods damn him. He knows Viggo is aware of far too much about dragons for anyone to have a good chance of getting the upper hand. Still, Faulklin has one thing others don't.

"Yes, but can they talk to one like I can and get it to come quietly? How many resources would go to waste in someone else's hands?" Viggo was making himself appear far too interested in a Maces and Talons piece, pretending disinterest. "Exactly how much has your expenses in wrangling equipment gone down since I've been here again?"

"Hm... about as much as our expenses in healing remedies and new hire costs have gone up I'd imagine."

Faulklin rolled his eye.

"You've done more than break even. Otherwise why am I still here?" After all, Viggo doesn't tolerate a blow to his business unless the benefit outweighs the loss. "Something that rare should be plenty enough of a trade for one pitiful thrall."

Viggo laughed under his breath. "You see, _that_ is what I like about you." He's genuinely smiling. Faulklin hates that smile more than any other. "All of that wit, stubbornness, and strategies are matched only by the level of your self-depreciation." He paused deliberately. "Well, that and my own intellect and experience, but that's beside the point, isn't it?"

Faulklin rolled his eye again humorlessly, to which Viggo has a quip about _getting stuck that way_ for. It takes all of his willpower not to humor him with another.

"You use your usefulness as a bargaining chip, yet when it comes down to it, you don't really believe in that usefulness... or rather, you don't want _me_ to believe in it, and its value."

"I could make it a damn lot bigger of a hindrance if I want," Faulklin warned.

"You could also find yourself at the bottom of the sea."

"Good," Faulklin barked. "It'd be about damn time."

Viggo appeared to ponder both further, before turning his sights back to the boy. "Alright, assuming you can get this Fury to me, and with minimal damage, perhaps I will indeed consider it. However, it is the results that matter, so you'd best see to it that the results are favorable."


End file.
